Month: April 2006

Paul, at Cocktail Chronicles, posted a good roundup of the first Mixology Monday event. The other entries are all well worth reading, so if you’re interested, you won’t waste a minute of your time.

Rick, from Kaiser Penguin, commented here that he tried the Dempsey cocktail, after reading my post. He judged it syrupy, which is a good observation. I think a little citrus and possibly some bitters might help balance the flavors, but then it probably wouldn’t be a Dempsey anymore.

The first Mixology Monday is upon us, and the theme is pastis. I’d never worked with pastis, but it’s an ingredient I wanted to learn about and experiment with, so I looked forward to this challenge.

Or, rather, challenges, because the first question is, what do you buy? I don’t know from pastis at all. I’ve sampled ouzo and real absinthe, but I’d never purchased any of the anise-liqueur family, so I didn’t know what was good or what to look for. I still will need to play around with this liqueur category before I feel comfortable with it.

There’s a saying that the French keep the best pastis for themselves; when you consider that the best-known pastis bottlings in the U.S. are Ricard and Pernod, neither of which are particulary loved by connoisseurs, you might have to admit that the old saying is true.

So, what do you look for? Luckily, we shop at the best liquor store in New York City and I trusted LeNell to help me out. She doesn’t even seem to carry Picard or Renault—excuse me, Ricard or Pernod—or at least, I never found them on her shelves. Among the brands she does stock, however, is Charbay, from California’s Napa Valley. LeNell explained that Charbay produces her favorite pastis; since it contains nothing artificial, the flavors are cleaner. A blog for French expats in California, Silicon Valley frogs, called it “un pastis entièrement naturel et sans colorant.”

So we brought home the Charbay, in part, I must say, because Jen loved the bottle. One fun thing about purchasing wines and spirits is that among the wide range of bottle designs, you’re sure to find a few to collect to display or to use as bottles to bring water to the table when you have guests. So, hell, why not consider aesthetics when you’re making your decision? Engage all your senses, dammit!

So we got it home. I poured a little into a glass and we had a sip. (Actually, Jen just sniffed it.) Strong! The flavors of the botanicals were really overpowering, and the pastis alone was also very sweet. This needed cutting, so it was time for mixing up some drinks. I had done a little research beforehand, and I found a few classic French drinks using pastis; I wanted to try three: la tomate, le perroquet, and la feuille morte. I made up some mint syrup and away we went.

The first concoction was la tomate: 1 part pastis, 1/2 part grenadine syrup, and 5 parts water. I mixed up two of these and brought them over. The water and grenadine cut the stronger flavors of the pastis, and yet the pastis still predominated. The amount of water in the drink made it really refreshing and hydrating with a touch of flavor from the other ingredients. Great for a hot day outside, after work, maybe served with a little ice to chill it.

Next up was le perroquet, sort of. My mint syrup wasn’t really green, and the pastis was colorless. The perroquet is supposed to be green, like a parakeet (hence the name), but the mint and pastis mixture was clear, so we skipped it, and I skipped ahead to la feuille morte—that’s 1 part pastis, 1/2 part grenadine, 1/2 part mint syrup, and 5 parts water. The color should approximate that of a dead leaf—again, hence the name. But again, because my mint syrup was so pale, the drink was just red like the tomate.

The mint added complexity. We both felt that although the tomate was refreshing it was ultimately a little dull. The feuille morte was better, but still not quite what we’re used to drinking. I still think this will be a good drink on a hot day, but otherwise, it didn’t send me.

By this time, we were up for serious drinking. The alcohol in the previous drinks was so diluted by water that we felt no buzz. Cocktails are about flavor as much as alcohol, of course, but don’t kid yourself. Cocktails are also about buzz. We needed buzz.

Difford’s Guide had a cocktail called the Dempsey: gin, Calvados, pastis, and grenadine. The apple and gin seemed like they’d contribute the complexity and balance that the earlier drinks lacked. So I mixed a couple up. Jen liked it quite a bit—the layers of flavor really appealed to her. I still thought it too sweet.

This was fun. I got a little tired of the anisey flavor after a while, but I still like the stuff. It’s just something I’ll have to drink in small quantities and not very frequently. I am, though, looking forward to experimenting further.

Jen’s got a photoset up of Gary Regan’s visit this weekend to LeNell’s. Imagine seeing Dale DeGroff, David Wondrich, and Gary Regan in the same week! Wow…

Anyway, Gary Regan is so charming and fun in person. He discussed mixing techniques, cocktail ingredients, and bar equipment, all while mixing drinks and passing them out to the crowd. He started with the sidecar. He discussed his theory of mixology—how everything reduces down to several basic recipes. The sidecar is cognac, triple sec, and citrus juice. The margarita—tequila, triple sec, citrus. The kamikaze—vodka, triple sec, citrus. The cosmo complicates things, but only barely—citrus vodka, triple sec, cranberrry, citrus juice.

This is a powerful idea, and Gary attributes it to Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh. But whomever the originator, it’s an idea worth remembering—a strong spirit, a liqueur (or other sweetening agent), and citrus juice. The spirit is your base; so many of Gary’s recipes are in the proportion of 3-2-1. Three parts spirit, two of liqueur, and one of citrus. Add other ingredients, maybe some vermouth, an additional liqueur, but keep the spirit as the predominant flavor, and just experiment.

On the subject of experimentation, Gary talked about coming down on the train to LeNell’s and thinking, Hmmmmmm, I love an aviation cocktail. (That’s gin, maraschino, and lemon juice—oh look! spirit, sweetening liqueur, and lemon!) Could you make an aviation with tequila replacing the gin? Well, why not try it. So he tried that with us. We got a Gary Regan original.

He said, well, you know that lime is traditional with tequila, so why are we using lemon? It seems that one night he wanted an aviation but was out of lemon. He tried lime juice instead, and it was vile in the drink. Just doesn’t marry well to the maraschino apparently.

So he mixed up this new drink and sampled a little. Not bad. Not bad at all. He poured up some and passed them out to the crowd, dubbing it the LeNell—which flattered and charmed the hell out of our hostess. And it’s a good drink.

Jen doesn’t like the maraschino (Stock) that I’ve used for drinks, but Gary used the Luxardo, and she liked it. Her only quibble was that the drink might be better if were drier, with a bit more citrus. Gary overheard her telling me that and mixed up a bit more lemon and added it to her drink.

He then said that a good bartender will, if he or she has enough time and isn’t in the weeds, remember a regular’s preferences and, for example, mix my drink with less lemon juice and Jen’s with a little more.

Cocktail king Dale DeGroff and Esquire columnist David Wondrich educated 40 happy cocktail geeks, bartenders, and other spirits-industry types on Tuesday evening at a Garment District bar called The Balance. My ticket in was a Valentine’s Day gift from my lovely wifey, and I can’t think of a better present.

I arrived early, before The Balance opened, and waited on the sidewalk. Another guy was lingering on the sidewalk as well. A woman approached us and began friendly conversation: Are you here for the mixology seminar?

She asked if I was “in the industry” and I said, No, I’m just a cocktail geek. The other guy, Ted, was also a geek like me, but the woman, Hanna, does PR for the food and wine business.

Hanna also knows Dale DeGroff, from her time in wine PR, so she very graciously offered to introduce me to him as we entered Balance. So we walked up the stairs, went around the corner, and saw on the bar an array of full champagne flute. The bartender said, “Please! Have a champagne cobbler.” We each grabbed a drink (YUM!) and with flute in hand, I met Dale DeGroff.

Aside to mko: Eeeeeeeeee!

Hanna had already told me what I’d heard from so many others—that Dale is warm and friendly and a very damn nice guy, and that his wife, Jill, at least equals, if not exceeds, his charm. I didn’t, unfortunately, take the chance to talk to Jill, but Dale is down-to-earth, friendly, and approachable.

After we milled about and chatted, Dale opened the seminar. He made a few brief comments about his champagne cobbler recipe and introduced David Wondrich. David discussed very briefly the history of alcohol and drinking, explaining that among the first “cocktails” was beer or wine fortified with a little spirit. From there, he described the history of the punch and provided a recipe that he says approximates an old-fashioned spiced rum punch, from British-controlled India.

From punch, he moved on to the birth of the Gin Cock-Tail. To oversimplify his explanation a bit, the cocktail seems to have arisen as a way to make bitters more palatable. As the name implies, bitters are bitter-tasting—they’re a compound of spirit and botanicals used for medicinal purposes and to aid digestion. The idea arose to make the bitters more palatable by diluting them. To paraphrase a certain dotty nanny, just a spoonful of gin and sugar helps the medicine go down.

This idea has pedigree: British sailors fought scurvy by consuming limes and their juice; cutting the bitter lime with gin—hence the gimlet. The same happy breed of men quaffed quinine-laced tonic water in India, to fight malaria. The tonic was so bitter, they cut it with gin and citrus—hence the G&T.

Getting back to the point, a Cock-Tail was initially any strong spirit, sugar, and bitters, shaken over ice.

Wondrich is a crazy man. The bitters he used Tuesday were Stoughton bitters, a common sight in the 1800s, but virtually unknown since at least Prohibition. His batch was a brew that he’d cooked up himself, adapted from recipes foundonline.

Wondrich’s cocktail The Enchantress comes from a rare bartenders’ manual by a fellow named Charles Campbell. How rare? Only one copy is known to exist, and that’s in a rare-book room at a library in San Francisco. (mko, if you’re still reading, you have homework.)

Holy God, but I could go on and on talking about Tuesday’s seminar: how charmed I was by the space, how much I liked sampling each cocktail, how I talked LeNell’s ear off after the seminar, asking her tons of questions about how and why she got into this business. (I’m still embarrassed that I inadvertently broke up her conversation with Jill DeGroff, but they were both gracious about it.)

But David and Dale were great—funny, open, super-knowledgable, open to questions (lots and lots of questions). I can’t wait to do this again [that’s a PDF—be careful].

Junipero 102

Shake first three ingredients over ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Top with Moscato and garnish with lime twist.

This is so appropriate: Jen loves fizzy Friday because it’s a weekly commemoration of our wedding day. What better way to celebrate than with Junipero, the gin introduced to us by the lovely Mimseys. Plus, it’s a cocktail with Brooklyn origins, and of course, it’s fizzy.

I’ll letcha know how it goes.

Meanwhile, Brenda from Spirit World mentioned in her post that Food and Wine’s Cocktails 2006 was ready for preorder. I saw it tonight at Hudson News, so we’ll have to pick up a copy soon.